Meet Curio City 2.0

What a strange week. Led by three very big orders, Sunday was my third-best day ever. Yahoo pay-per-click ads led two shoppers to clean out my pursehooks. Sunday’s sales alone were enough to beat the corresponding week LY.

On Monday (Veterans Day), my sales total was $6. On Tuesday, I issued a refund and ended the day $3 in the hole. Wednesday, no business at all. The week utterly died after this incredible Sunday, at a time of year when I should be doing at least $100 a day. It is as if my site disappeared entirely. With all the work we’ve been doing on the new site, maybe it did. Who knows?

Wednesday night we launched. I turned off my PPC campaigns. All of the delays and anticipation for the new Sunshop finally paid off, almost exactly two years after Curio City’s original launch. This upgrade cost almost as much as creating the original website did.

It did not go smoothly. We didn’t get the bugs out and bring the site back up until Thursday evening. And then, within half an hour of going live, the new site recorded its first sale. What a relief! Another followed a couple of hours later. I’ve still got plenty of tuning up to do, and then a newsletter to send out. But I think I’m back in business.

The launch party consisted of me, a growler of Opa-Opa Brown Ale, a shot of Seagram’s, and a cigar. Iggy (my cat) sent his regrets; he had to go out and nap under his bush. He missed a good time.

In vaguely related news…I placed an enormous pursehook order that pushed my open-to-buy very deeply in the red. I am counting on those pursehooks to blow out of here. If I gambled wrong, I’m going to be in some real trouble. I hope they will arrive today.